Mori Building 5G Plan

Soichi Watanabe

DirectoreHills Corporation

1. Communication as urban infrastructure

Cities are formed according to the major t ypes ofinfrastructure of the era. The major infrastructure contributing to
the structure of modern cities is roadways. This is so obvious thatmodern people are scarcely aware of the fact that all homes facea roadway and people and goods move on these roadways, which
support people’s lives and activities in cities. In the outskirts ofcities throughout Japan, all kinds of shops can be seen along mainroadways.
Another infrastructure supporting cities is railways. Raillines stretch across major cities like a mesh and help to movepeople, even in medium-sized cities. Railways were the maintype of urban infrastructure in Japan before automobiles became
widespread in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There were railway
stations in the center of cities where people would gather, withdepartment stores and shopping areas nearby. When automobiles
become widespread, the weight of urban infrastructure
shifted from railways to roads, and shopping centers and othercommercial facilities in inner cities began to suffer while shopping
centers began to flourish in suburban areas.
For a long time before railways appeared, a main infrastructure
supporting cities was not railways or roads, but waterways.
Evidence that waterways were a primary type of infrastructure fortowns can be seen throughout Japan. Let’s look at two examples.
Figure 1 shows an Edo period riverside fish market near what
■ Figure 1: Late Edo period riverside fish market (nearcurrent Muromachi 1-chome, Nihonbashi
Tokyo). From “Famous Places in the Eastern
Capital: True View of Nihonbashi Bridge,
Together with a Complete View of the Fish
Market (Nihonbashi shinkei, narabi ni uoichizenzu), from the series Famous Places in theEastern Capital (Tôto meisho)

is now Muromachi1-chome in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. Shops lined
the sides of the waterway, and many boats came and went carrying
goods. Such scenes continued until World War II. In Edo towns,
waterways were heavily relied upon for the distribution of goods, sothey were lined with many stores. Tokyo’s waterways have since
fallen into the background, but they were firmly at the forefrontduring the Edo period.
The other example that waterways played an important roleas infrastructure is Itsukushima Shrine (Figure 2), which is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site.
■ Figure 2: Itsukushima Shrine

Itsukushima Shrine, said to have been built during the eraof Empress Suiko in around 600 AD, is famous for its “floating”
torii gate. The torii gate is on the approach to the front of a shrine,
and its location in the sea meant that the waterway was the formal
entrance to the shrine and therefore the formal approach forworshipping was done by boat. The reason for worshippingby boat
can be understood by looking at the local shipping routes at thetime (Figure 3).
■ Figure 3: ajor shipping routes of Inland Sea duringTenpyo Era (around 750 AD). Based on “Ancientstates and transportation on Seto Inland Sea,”
Hironobu Matsubara, 2004.
KATAKAMI NO TSUMURO NO TSU

Itsukushima Shrine

SABATSUMARIHUNO URAKUMAGENO URAKAYANO NO TSUNANIWAZUAKASHI NO URAUSHIMADOTAMANO URANAGAI
KOJIMANO URA
KAZAHAYA SHIKINANO URA
NAGATONO URASUMINOE
NO TSUUTATSUTADOTSU
Oyamazumi Shrine

TOSA DOMARIKINOMINATO

NIKITATSUHIWASA

WAMANOURA KUNISAKITSU

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At the time, the inland sea was a major artery for themovement of people and goods, connecting ancient Nara, theChugoku, Shikoku and Kyushu regions, and even the Korean
peninsula.
In current terms, it was equivalent to an expressway. Ships
traveled this “expressway,” so the location of Itsukushima Shrineon this important route was like a service center on a modern
expressway, which is why passing ships would stop to visit theshrine.
As such, waterways constituted the main infrastructure forcities from the Asuka era through Edo and into the Meiji era,but this role gradually shifted to rail during Meiji and then began
shifting to roads in the Showa era. This is illustrated in Figure 4.

Telecommunication is very different because it moves
information entirely independently of a physical process, and thishas exactly the opposite effect on cities. Moving physical things
efficiently requires reduction of distances and time, which resultsin the formation of more centralized and highly concentrated
cities. Centralizing everything as much as possible increases
efficiency. Conversely, rather than concentrating informationin one place, efficient transmission of information is achieved
through sharing. Information is more efficient when people sharethe same information, and having information in only one placeis not efficient. The effect on city formation is decentralization,
which is opposite to the effect of waterways, rail and roads(Figure 5).

■ Figure 4: Rates of contribution to urban infrastructure■ Figure 5: Effects of urban infrastructure

Communication

100%(2000)i-mode
Itsukushima Shrine (593)

RoadsContribution

Railway from Shimbashi to Yokohama (1872)

Sea, River, Canal(Water transport)

Urban
Infrastructure

Transport
Items

Roads

People

RailGoods

Railways
Waterways

593

1872 1900

1968

2000 2020

Telecommunications appeared as infrastructure in the 1990s,and we can now see now how communication infrastructure has
impacted cities. From the time when telecom carrier DOCOMO
launched its i-mode mobile internet service in Japan in the late
1990s, the purchase of goods through the internet has increasedcontinuously. According to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Tradeand Industry, sales of goods through the internet in 2018 reached
one billion yen, or over half the sales volume of department storesand supermarkets (1.94 billion yen).
Before sales became possible through the internet, people
made purchases at physical stores, which made such stores
absolutely necessary. This is not necessarily the case now, and as
a result, physical stores, including commercial areas around train
stations and in suburbs, have begun to decline. This is resulting inchanges in the structure of cities, including the further decline ofcommercial facilities around train stations and the thinning-out of
suburban shopping areas.

2. Infrastructure’s impact on city formation

So far, we have examined changes in urban infrastructure,including waterways, rail, roads and telecommunications, but theimpact of telecommunication on cities is very different from thatof waterways, roads and rail, so it is expected to greatly change thedirection of city formation.
Waterways, rail and roads are infrastructure for transporting
physical things, including people and goods. Of course,
information is also transported by people, but this is a secondaryeffect.

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Telecom

Efficiency＝ Concentration

InformationReduction of travel Distance

Information

Efficiency≠ Concentration≒ Sharing

Tomei Expressway
0%

Measure ofEfficiency

City formation

Centralization

Reduction of travel Time

Decentralization

Until now, this effect has not been particularly striking or
noticeable to people, but the COVID-19 pandemic instantly
brought it to the forefront. Before COVID-19, people were awareof the ideas of telework and web meetings, but few had any
opportunity to actually participate in such activities, nor did they
think that such methods were truly practical. Now, telework andweb meetings have permeated society in one fell swoop, promptedby COVID-19. The immediate switch to telework is evidence
that telecommunications as infrastructure has permeated society,but telework itself has also changed the way people think about
where to live. It has created the possibility of being decentralized
in suburbs or other regions rather than being centralized in cities,
unlike in the recent past. With fewer commutes into the cityand more time spent at home, employees are beginning to focus
more on the quality of their home environments and less ontheir commute times. As a result, people are considering moving
to the suburbs or regional communities where they can live inbetter environments with roomier homes. In fact, according tothe Report on Internal Migration in Japan from the Ministry ofInternal Affairs and Communications’ Statistics Bureau, people
began moving out of the 23 wards of Tokyo around May 2020and since that August, almost 5,000 people per month have been
exiting cities. The most popular destination has been Kanagawa
Prefecture, south of Tokyo, followed by Saitama Prefecture, northof Tokyo.
Similar trends have been observed overseas, such as reports ofhomes with gardens outside of London becoming more popular.

However, it does not mean that this trend will persist andpeople will continue to move out of large cities, making cities
decline further. Humans exist in the physical world, so urban
infrastructure, including roads and railways, will remain essential
and focused on centralization. In the future, therefore, the forcesof centralization and decentralization can be expected to compete
and over time they likely will reach some form of equilibrium.

3. What is required of communication?

Telecommunications now occupies an important position as
urban infrastructure, but it has come upon the scene relatively
recently and its functionality has not necessarily reached its fullpotential yet. In fact, the current functionality and capabilities oftelecommunication are said to be inadequate.
Urban infrastructure, including waterways, rail and roads,
share the essential role of distributing goods. Waterways transportlarge volumes of goods over long distances, rail transports
large numbers of people at high speed, and roadways transport
smaller numbers of people and goods but with the flexibility
to reach locations that waterways and rail cannot. As such,the combination of these three types of infrastructure meetsvarious types of demand. With telecommunications, however,relatively few types of service are available to users and the services
themselves do not differ among mobile carriers. If a user wants toutilize telecommunication in an uncommon way, the options arevery limited.
As an example, many people have experienced the problemof unstable communication when engaged in telework or a web
meeting. During COVID-19, people have been taking part inweb meetings increasingly more often, and anyone who has done
so will have surely experienced someone in a meeting losing theirconnection or their image freezing. Of course, a large part of thisis the communication bandwidth of the service being used, butbasically it is a problem of speed. Generally, communication isprovided with speeds on the uplink (transmitting/uploading) anddownlink (receiving/downloading) in a ratio of roughly 1:2, withpriority given to the downlink. This is because when people use
the internet, they generally look at websites or video, so priority isgiven to the downlink. This is how communication environments
are configured at present. For a web meeting, users are alsotransmitting video of themselves, so a speed ratio of 1:1 would bedesirable, but carriers do not offer such a choice and users are left
with only 1:2 services.
Next, let’s consider the growing use of sensors and other IoT
devices in production sites. In facilities such as plants and factories,
IoT devices for measurement and control are being installedto increase production efficiency, but wireless communicationsystems are not optimized for this task. Installing optical or othercables would be the most reliable method, but most factories arelarge and various locations must be tested before deciding whereto install IoT devices, so costs and time make cables impractical.
With Wi-Fi, however, latency cannot be guaranteed andcommunication can be interrupted when there is congestion. Also,
on-site IT specialists are needed to maintain security at all times,

but this is not practical for most companies. There are carriers thatprovide guaranteed latency and high-security communication, butthese are expensive. In the end, there is no practical choice.
Meanwhile, telecommunications services currently provided
to homes and industrial buildings such as factories do not offer thenecessary range or types of functions essential for serving as basic
infrastructure.
Services that can overcome such limitations include local LTE(4G) and local 5G. In particular, local 5G provides the capabilities
required by industry, including ultra-high speed, low latency andmassive simultaneous connections. It also offers strong security
through the use of changeable SIM cards. Further, users canflexibly realize desirable communication environment with the useof advanced technologies such as slicing.
Telecom carriers now fulfill the role of seamlessly connecting
the entire country, similar to waterways, rail and highways. If local
5G could handle the last mile from main lines to homes, enablingusers to freely configure various services, telecommunications will
be able to guarantee the functionality and freedom required to beconsidered a genuine urban infrastructure.

4. Local 5G and Mori Building

As shown, local 5G is a technology capable of supportingand even transforming activity in cities, as urban infrastructure.
Mori Building is now considering deploying local 5G to create
communities where people living and working in cities will be able
to enjoy tremendous convenience in their lives and work.
Communication nodes linking telework and satellite offices
Whereas the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to wind down
eventually, we have seen that telework is possible in a practicalsense, so it is expected to continue to be used. That said, this does
not mean that offices in city centers will disappear. But how thisnew form of telework will be integrated with existing ways ofworking in offices will need to be considered carefully.
Part of the challenge will be to provide opportunities for “fivesense” communication, something that has been diminished bytelework. With telework, it is difficult to feel beyond words, withall five senses, as we can when communicating with someone inperson face to face. Subtle nuances, such as atmosphere, gesturesand even handshakes, can be lost in digital communication. Itis said that in enterprises, new business ideas often arise in lively
discussions among people in a room or during idle talk amongcolleagues. In the future, there will be a need for the kind offive-sense communication that is possible when people gather
in a downtown office but not during telework. Mechanisms andenvironments to make this happen will be needed.
One prerequisite for this will be communication nodes withthe functionality to enable work and communication to proceedsmoothly and securely between offices, satellite offices andtelework locations (Figure 6).
Advanced security is necessary when handling important
corporate information at homes, satellite offices and other externallocations. Network management departments in every enterprise

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■ Figure 6: M ori Building local 5G overview

Mori Building Local 5G Network
5G (Telecom Carrier)
Building Systems
Tenant A

SIM Authentication

In-house LAN A

Tenant B

Tenant C

In-house LAN B

Autonomous Cars

In-house LAN C

make use of various technologies to maintain security, but whenemployees use these systems off-premises, as with telework andsatellite offices, it can be practically impossible to manage all cases.
It is also difficult for employees working externally to perfectly
perform the many and often complex security procedures required.
As such, it is becoming necessary to incorporate local 5G intobusiness, enabling companies to control their own communicationand provide advanced security by only using SIM cards. With
this solution, as long as local 5G is deployed in the main, satellite
offices and other locations such as resorts or “workation” spots,
every company can ensure highly secure communication amonginternal locations, work can be done safely and the company
intranet can be accessed securely from any of these locations.
The same measures will be deployable for telework by
combining local 5G with a carrier’s roaming mechanism. One day
it likely will be a standard practice to install local 5G base stations
in downtown offices.
Self-driving valet services for building parking
The appearance of self-driving vehicles in cities will havea huge impact. Less-mobile people suddenly will be able to go
anywhere they want, whenever they want, and with fewer traffic
accidents than at present. An example of this phenomenon will
be self-driving in building parking lots. With this technology,
drivers will be able to leave their vehicles at building entrances
and the vehicle will proceed to a parking space on its own. If atime to return is set, the vehicle could be ready and waiting at theappointed time, similar to a hotel valet service, at any building.

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Shopping facilities lose sales opportunities due to customers
waiting to enter parking areas during holidays and other busy
times. If this same time could be spent inside, sales would likely
increase. If self-driving technology were available in officebuildings and apartment buildings, parking areas would no longer
need to be within a building itself, since available spaces nearby
also could be used for parking.
Establishing this technology will require the introductionof local 5G. Inside a building, where GPS is not available, it isdifficult for a self-driving vehicles to determine its location. Local
5G would enable a building to communicate with self-driving
vehicles to provide information on building access, the parkinglot entrance, lanes within the parking lot and available spaces forparking, allowing vehicles to operate indoors without a need for
AI. Local 5G, with its advanced security and low latency, will
enable this to become a reality.
The deployment of local 5G is also being considered forhandling sensitive information in residential facilities, forsupporting healthcare management through the use of sensors,and for providing added-value conveniences to building residents.

5. Conclusion

Local 5G technology will provide customized communication
services beyond those provided by carriers at the present time,and in user-friendly formats. It will require communication
carriers, vendors and users to collaborate to make this technology
even better. If this can be done, the promise of safer and moreconvenient cities would appear to be possible.